Improved Usability in Claris FileMaker 19
The newest version of Claris FileMaker offers a number of small improvements that will make installing and using the platform easier and more accommodating than before. Here are a few of my favorite new additions.
macOS Dark Mode Support
Apple describes Dark Mode as being easy on your eyes as it helps you focus on your work. For those who do not know what I am talking about, Apple introduced Dark Mode support on macOS 10.14 Mojave that works across the whole platform, including apps. They state that ‘your content stands out while darkened controls and windows recede into the background’. Personally, I love it.
With Claris FileMaker Pro 19, Claris has added Dark Mode support, which gets applied automatically if the Dark Mode preference is set at the macOS level. Dark Mode gets applied to just about every aspect of Claris FileMaker including toolbars, inspector panes, dialogs, and even the script workspace.
Layouts, however, will not automatically take on this new dark theme (although the layout creation and editing controls will); if you want your layouts to reflect the style of Dark Mode, you will have to develop that on your own. You can use the new Get ( SystemAppearance ) function to navigate to an appropriate layout.
Also worth noting, the relationships graph will look ‘normal’, as that is not affected by Dark Mode.
Open a File When Claris FileMaker Pro is Launched
Do you have a single file that you open every time you launch Claris FileMaker? Well, Claris just made it easier than ever to open a file by creating a preference that allows you to choose a local or hosted file to open at startup. This means that every time you now launch Claris FileMaker, the file that you chose will open automatically. Note: Password protected files will still require you to login to the specified file, unless the “Login Using” File Option has been set on that file.
macOS Drag-and-Drop Installation
Have you ever found yourself thinking that the installation of Claris FileMaker Pro can be somewhat cumbersome? Claris has simplified the installation to a Drag-and-Drop process. Now, it’s as easy as dragging the Claris FileMaker Pro icon straight into your Applications folder.
High-Efficiency Image Format Support
What is the High-Efficiency Image File (HEIF) format? HEIF is a compressed container format that can store images or image sequences with support for animated files as well. An image with the same quality uses about half of the storage space used by a JPEG file.
Why is it important that Claris FileMaker Pro 19 now supports this file format? With the release of iOS 11 (current version iOS 13), Apple made the change to store images captured on an iOS device as HEIF instead of JPEG. If you tried to insert a file from your iOS device into a container field, Claris FileMaker would not know how to display it. Now that Claris FileMaker Pro 19 supports this new file format, this issue no longer exists!
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